During the long primary season, many here at Daily Kos came to appreciate (and link to) posts by Al Giordano, driving force in the "Authentic Journalism" movement, over at The Field. For much of that primary season, these posts were hosted at RuralVotes.com
But at the end of last week, Giordano and the hosts of Rural Votes parted ways, apparently due to a dispute over censorship. Giordano has indicated that one of his missives which discussed what the Obama campaign learned from legendary activist and organizer Saul Alinsky was taken down by Rural Votes, for reasons which still are unclear. (The presumption by many is that Rural Votes wrongly feared, in a concern-trollish way, that the association with Alinsky would somehow be used to smear Obama).
In any case, fans of The Field have been wondering (a) what is going to happen to their donations (approximately $5,000) to send Giordano to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and (b) what is going to happen to the extensive archive of stellar Field content (and comments), which are no longer accessible at Rural Votes.
There is, however, a way around Rural Votes' embargo: Namely, pages cached by Google. Try this link:
Washington Post columnist David Broder, often referred to as the "dean" of the D.C. press corps, is a regular source of irritation and exasperation here, as he routinely dresses up Republican talking points as "centrist" conventional wisdom.
But now an investigation by Harper's Magazine online columnist Ken Silverstein reveals that "Dean" Broder has been reaping lecture fees and enjoying fancy junkets from corporate and lobbying interests -- without revealing these conflicts of interest to his readers:
[Broder] appears to be a regular presence these days on the business lecture circuit, and has even spoken to major health care groups. Do a Google search and you’ll see that Broder is represented by a number of speaker’s bureaus, including Grabow, which says it is “your David Broder booking agent for private corporate events.”
More on Broder's hidden conflicts -- and his hypocritical public stance on journalists receiving such perks -- after the jump...
Salon.com has the scoop: In an email to supporters, Hillary Clinton announces that she will concede to Barack Obama on Saturday morning in Washington, D.C., and endorse him as the Democratic candidate:
On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.
The full text of her email is at the link to Salon above. Commentary after the jump...
This diary is a personal story I've been meaning to tell for a long time. It's about what one childhood game of touch football several decades ago had in common the strategy that just won Barack Obama the Democratic presidential nomination. So I hope you'll bear with my tale for a little while, because it does have an important lesson at the end...
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=-
One afternoon when I was 12 and my brother was 11, we went over to the Knutsen's for a cookout. Mrs. Knutsen was a close friend of our mother. But her two boys were a good deal older than us, more like 16 and 15. While the adults grilled burgers and talked, her boys challenged us to a game of touch football -- two against two -- expecting to trounce us.
A couple of big teenagers against two scrawny prepubescents? It should have been no contest.
Yet my brother and I stunned the two older boys with a hard-fought but resounding victory... one which reminds me a lot, in retrospect, of how Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton. How we pulled it off -- and what it can tell us about the Obama victory -- after the jump.
Sen. Clinton ... is embarking on a gambit that is uncertain in its result and simply breathtaking in its cynicism.
Coming from Marshall -- who has been unstinting in investigating the Bush administration's excesses, while remaining evenhanded about the Democratic candidates -- this has got to sting.
Over at MyDD, I've posted a diary which will probably get me flamed so heatedly I'll be reduced to ashes.
I was responding to a post by site owner (and Kos vet) Jerome Armstrong, who wrote that:
[...] Clinton, I'm betting, has more interest in using her capital to reform the nomination process.
Now, I actually support the idea that the Democrats ought to simplify the party's nominating process. But I have some questions to pose (and answers to suggest) prompted by Jerome's observation and assumptions:
1. QUESTION: Why did we never hear a peep from Bill or Hillary Clinton in the 1992 and 1996 elections about how the nomination process was flawed?
ANSWER: Because the process worked in their favor in those election cycles.
West Virginia has less than 1% of the party's delegates;
Fewer than 2/3 of West Virginians voted for Clinton, so she failed to meet expectations;
Less than half of those voters could be characterized as lower-income "hard-working whites," to use Clinton's own formulation;
In short, the portion of the electorate about which Hillary and the media are trying to make so much hay only account for less than 1/2 of 2/3 of less than 1% of the only tally that matters -- delegates.
In conclusion, since when did less than 0.33% of the electorate become so important?
I'm just so elated tonight with Obama's stunning performance, all I can think to post is the most joyful song I've heard in the past few months -- Dr. Dog's cover of Architecture in Helsinki's "Heart It Races." Give it 30 seconds, this is one heck of a catchy tune:
Regardless of what happens in the next couple of hours, this race is effectively over. Obama swamped Clinton in North Carolina, taking a large chunk of the last big batch of delegates, and has at worst wrestled Hillary to a tie in Indiana, eliminating the possibility of any further (credible) spin for her campaign.
This diary is about ice cream, cake and the current election. Stick around to find out what the relevance is...
Every single pundit on TV and in the media is committing the identical error when they interpret the results of various primaries and caucuses. After each contest, exit polls are examined to determine who is "winning" and "losing" various demographics, with each camp using its own metrics.
Looking at the world through the patented Mark Penn microtargeted lens, Clinton partisans speciously argue that Obama is being "rejected" by certain types of voters -- older voters, Catholics, "lunchbucket" Democrats (isn't that phrase itself incredibly condescending?), etc. Meanwhile, the Obama camp tries to promote a colder, more comparative interpretation, noting that Obama has improved his standing among those demographics, and pointing out others where Clinton is "losing" voters -- for example, among youth and other independent-minded new voters.
And of course the mainstream media dutifully accepts and parrots this framing -- viewing the race through this lens of winning and losing demographics -- though its premise is entirely bogus. How so? I'll tell you after the jump...
Would the New York Times (a/k/a the "Gray Lady" in media circles) please make up its mind about the meaning of last night's results? Here is a sample of just a few wildly contradictory statements from today's paper:
INTRODUCTION TO LEAD ARTICLE:
Mrs. Clinton's margin in Pennsylvania was probably not sufficient to alter the basic dynamics of the race
FROM LEAD EDITORIAL:
Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race.
But then:
HEADLINE OF SECOND ARTICLE:
With Clear Victory, She Has Rationale to Fight On
Like most Kossacks, I will be watching the results of today's primary with keen interest, checking in to Kos and The Field in particular for the latest results and analysis.
But in truth, and no offense to Keystone State voters, I have to ask -- How does Pennsylvania really matter?
Consider, for example, this article from the McClatchy newspaper chain:
... that I was utterly embarrassed by the network's handling of last night's debate -- though not terribly surprised. (See my note at the end of this diary.)
Here is the email I just sent to Mr. Salinger, et al.:
As someone who worked for Janice Tomlin, Dan Goldfarb and Pam Hill in the late 80s while in college, I was completely appalled by the childish tenor and utter superficiality of the questions posed by Mssrs. Gibson and Stephanopoulos last night.
ABC News achieved a new low in presidential debate moderation. If the questions had been gathered from random people on the subway, more light would have been shed on the plans and qualifications of these two candidates.
I was utterly ashamed by the performance of a news network whose name I once was proud to have on my resumé. No longer.
If you thought the Tuzla story was embarrassing, this one really ought to cause the Clinton campaign to hang its collective head in shame:
According to a story published today at Politico.com, among the many bills not being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign are the premiums for her staff's health care coverage:
Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out.
Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda.
As an Obama supporter, I am naturally hoping for a clear-cut win in Texas and a narrow win in Ohio. As a realist, I think there is a chance Clinton could eke out narrow popular vote wins in both states.
It is imperative for the Obama campaign to be on top of the media tonight in every respects, but especially in regard to the Texas results -- which may be quite complicated to interpret.
In particular, Obama's campaign must be prepared to urge the media to focus on the combined Texas delegate results from both the primary and caucus, even as Clinton's people can be expected to try to focus attention solely on the Texas primary popular vote if it favors them.
This is ultra-important because if Clinton wins Ohio and narrowly wins the Texas primary vote, she will announce that she "won both states," even if she loses the Texas caucus and overall contest for delegates in the Lone Star state.
For some time now, I've been concerned that Hillary Clinton might really be a Republican.
I know, I know. She says that she's a registered Democrat. Now, I've never actually seen her registration card. But I have no reason to doubt that she is really a Democrat, just like she says.
Well, actually, to be honest I maybe have a couple reasons to doubt it...
